Taking place in Ritz Carlton Ballroom, Pacific Place, it didn't need any serious effort from me and Nanda to go to the venue after a basketball practice in Senayan we got at a few hours before the concert started. The ticket price was also not that expensive for that loads of awesome musicians. It costs fifty thousand rupiahs. My parents and Nanda's have also given their full permission for us to watch the concert.

Our only thing was that the concert, sponsored by Dji Sam Soe, which is, as we all know, a cigarette brand, was not allowed to have audiences aged younger than 18 y.o. I am 5 months away from being 18 and Nanda has just celebrated her 17th birthday few weeks ago.

I have asked kak Novan Yahya, a university student Jazzuality reporter, about this thing. He said that I don't need to be worried as they won't have time to check EVERY SINGLE audience's ID card. He said that the last year's event was full of teenagers crowd. That's quite logical, so Nanda and I went to the venue without any further thought about this thing.

Problems started to rouse when we arrived at the venue. It was only a few minutes after the ticket boxes opened, so there wasn't too many people already, and event officials there, yes, they checked everyone who's entering the venue's id card. Yes. Every single one. Seeing that, Nanda and I turned our backs, walked off the entrance gate, tried to figure out what to do.

Okay, so this is the condition: We got 3 ID cards with us. They were mine, Nanda's, and the copied version of my sister's. The last one was the only id card accepted to enter the venue.

After making phone calls to kak Novan Yahya, who was laughed and convinced us that the event officials will let us through and if they're not, promised to help us, and having crepes (well, Nanda and I was starving. We were just done a basketball practice, remember?) we decided to try to enter the venue with this arragement :

Nanda, who is smaller and look younger than me, will be using my sister's id, so she would be officially not-under-18 and I, who is just months away to be 18, will be using my very own ID card. If they don't let both of us through, we will not get in there and we'll wait for kak Novan Yahya.

That simple.

After a non stop "Bismillah", carrying a bunch of courage and confident, we went to the entrance gate, showed the ID cards they asked for, and get in! Yeay! The let us through! Alhamdulillah. Thank You, dear Lord.

Our next problem was that we still needed to show our ID cards to buy the tickets. I tried to buy the tickets using a "Buy 1 get 1 free" voucher I got from the internet, but they didn't accept the voucher since there was my name on it and my ID card showed that I'm not 18 y.o yet. So we bought the regular tickets, using my sister's ID card. 1 ID card for two tickets. I know that it was not allowed, and of course so did the ticket box keeper. But she gave us the tickets. Again, Alhamdulillah. Thanks, Mighty GOD :)

the ticket

After having our tickets, Nanda and I went out of the venue to do Shalat Maghrib. We were a bit afraid that we couldn't get in again, or they would ask our ID cards again and not letting us in because we didn't have the acceptable ones. But none of them happened. We could easily get in there again by showing our tickets. God is realllllllly Good, my friend.

Finally, we queued to enter the ballroom. We also met kak Novan Yahya I've been talking on the cellphone with. I told him that Nanda and I were still very afraid because there were also some officials at the ballroom entrance who seemed to check our ID cards. Kak Novan Yahya, again, laughed and said that there was nothing to worry about since they wouldn't have time to do that. Seeing the length of the queues, I could really trust what he said that time.

And yes, Kak Novan Yahya was right. They didn't ask for our ID cards. Not again. Nanda and I and Kak Novan Yahya and his fellow reporter got a very nice spot in the front rows, right in front of 2 keyboard sets on the left of the stage. There were 3 keyboard sets on stage. The other one was on the right of the stage. Can't stop thanking God that the one I was in front of it was Indra Lesmana's.

And the show began. It was magnificent. Too aweeeeeeeeeesome. Worth all the lies Nanda and I made.

Imagine:
Those brilliant musicians + super amazing, hard working big band (which includes drums, trumpets, saxes, even KENDANG!) + extra innovative backdrop + STAGE DRAMA FROM THE MUSICIANS! What more can I say. It really was a blast.

My words can never describe it. Nor Jazzuality's. But they write it thousands time better. So click here to read their report.

And here comes the big thing

See that? At least I have something that is MORE than what he has. Height. :p